Today we have Carter stuck on a ship by herself and Carter stuck in a drill with three other people.

Grace

Synopsis

We
begin on the Prometheus finally fixed
after last season and operating as expected, with Carter on board to help with
the new shakedown trip back to Earth and so that she can divert the ship to
explore a scientific anomaly nearby. After stopping however the ship is engaged
by one of unknown origin who follows them into a nearby gas cloud that the ship
attempts to hide in. As they attempt to make it however Carter is knocked
unconscious, only to wake and find herself the only passenger with no escape
pods left on the ship and the ship unable to move.

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While
attempting to fix the problems on the ship Carter begins experiencing
hallucinations of her teammates, at first from Teal’c who warns not to sleep
due to her untreated injuries though she falls asleep anyway. Later she also
begins to hallucinate the presence of a young girl who keeps wanting Carter to
interact with her. While trying to fix the engines Jackson appears as well to
annoy her, stating that the hallucinations are acting out her subconscious thoughts
which in the case of Daniel is the belief she’s missing an opportunity by
focusing just on fixing the engines. Later while walking the corridors she hears
the hull creaking, with the outer hull slowly being eaten away by the gas cloud.

Meanwhile
at the SGC the base is starting to get worried by the lack of contact from the Prometheus which was meant to update
them some time ago. Given the belief that the ship likely tried to get to a
planet if they were in trouble the base begins exploration for any sign of the
ship or its crew.

Back
on the ship Carter is once again confronted by Teal’c who expresses her fear
that the situation is similar to the mind-probing by the Human-Replicators and
that they’re expecting her to give away information about ship systems by trying
to fix them. Instead Carter decides to carry on with trying to escape, this
time by flushing atmosphere from the ship to achieve motion but stops when she
sees the girl in one of the areas being flushed. While trying to find the girl
Carter is once again confronted by Daniel, who expresses the idea that the
cloud is sentient and is responsible for the presence of the girl and that
Carter should try communicating with the cloud before she falls unconscious yet
again.

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When
Carter wakes up she’s met by yet another hallucination, this time of her father
Jacob. Here the old soldier talks about his failings as a father and his
regrets when he to older, reflecting Carter’s subconscious belief that her work
at the SGC has seen her sacrifice other parts of her life, in particular her
relationships and friendships outside the SGC.

At
the SGC the exploration of several planets turns up empty, with O’Neill getting
fed up with the lack of progress. While in the changing room Teal’c tries to
get him to talk, letting on that Carter reacted similar to how he’s behaving
when O’Neill was stuck with Maybourne on the moon during the events of Paradise Lost but O’Neill instead stays
quiet.

Over
on the still-stranded Prometheus Carter
is finally confronted with a hallucination of O’Neill who confronts her about
her feelings for him and that there’s the possibility that she may simply be holding
onto her feelings for him as it’s the safe and obvious option while exploring
outside the SGC may mean heartbreak she wants to avoid. After having dealt with
all her fears and anxieties Carter finally figures a solution with the help of
the hallucination of the girl which allows her to get the ship moving. Before
leaving the cloud however she decides to help the alien ship in return for her
crew and a peaceful parting of ways.

Later
on Carter wakes inside the SGC infirmary and is greeted by O’Neill, who reveals
that her ordeal only lasted four days in total though due to her deliriousness
at the time she thought it had gone on for weeks. As she says goodbye and
drifts off to sleep again she hears the voice of the small girl for a final
time.

Analysis

So
after the rush and action packed midseason two-parter we go straight back to a
far slower affair than the show has done for a longtime now. Apart from the
beginning and the end the episode features no action or glitz, instead focusing
more on character development, in particular that of Carter.

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The
story of the episode entirely revolves around her character and allows the
writers to explore a character in a Carter-centric episode which we haven’t had
for seasons now, with the last episode to truly focus on her development was
probably season five’s Ascension.
Here they try to make up for 5 seasons of minimal character development and they
do largely succeed in that regard, with Carter having to deal with issues that
went unmentioned from previous adventures while also exploring more deeper life
issues that have slowly developed over the course of the entire show.

These
issues are well-juxtaposed against the people she knows and depends on
appearing before her, with seasoned warrior Teal’c representing her fears,
Daniel her want and need to explore and discover, her father the opportunities missed
and regrets she has accumulated, and O’Neill the man she’s been stuck on for so
long. The placing of these areas for each character is well done and feels
believable, even with the out of character callings of her first name with
remains relatively unused in the show, with even Daniel and her father using “Sam”
rather than her full name.

Despite
this success of exploring the issues is does highlight the fact that out of the
four main cast Carter has largely been left on the sidelines as a character
compared to the others, with Teal’c and O’Neill getting at least one episode a
year to explore their dangling personal issues. While Carter is a great
character in the moment of the episode it can’t help but be noticed that while
all the others have stories and adventures to call back to outside the SGC her
history even after this episode is sadly blank, with her most recent personal
outings having been the Air Force Academy which is hardly fun for the whole
family. Thankfully though this episode and latter half of the season does see
her expanded as a character and actually have a life outside the SGC.

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Regarding
the episode itself the only real weakness is that compared to the general tone
of the show the stark change in focus does make it seem to drag on far longer
than most, likely disappointing the viewers who are more in it for the
action-adventure than the character side but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing
given how it’s a 22 episode season format.

In
the end the episode breaks new light and reinvigorates a character who has
largely withered for the last several seasons, putting energy into exploring
life outside the SGC more and more.

Assorted Musings

· The unknown ship in this episode does remind me a lot of the
Covenant in Halo.

· How Earth still has only one ship is beyond me as pretty
soon they pump them out like sweets.

Quote
of the episode: “Thank you, Sir.”

“For
what?”

“Nothing.”

“Think
nothing of it. I’ve got plenty of that.” – Carter and O’Neill

Fallout

Synopsis

The
SGC are receiving a visit from Jonas Quinn, back to visit the SGC to inform
them of developments on Langara regarding exploration of their Goa’uld history.
He reveals that naquadriah, the radioactive version of naquadah that powers the
Tau’ri’s more advanced ships, is in fact not native to the planet as they had
suspected but is in fact naturally converted naquadah and that the process that
changes them from one to the other is still ongoing and is beginning to
threaten the stability of the planet itself.

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Carter
goes to Langara with Jonas to look at the data, along with Jonas’ assistant
Kianna, where they find that the situation is much worse than they though.
Frequent tremors start to occur on the planet, suggesting that the situation
has gotten progressively worse and worse and that if the biggest located
deposit explodes after conversion it’ll likely render the planet uninhabitable.
The worst discovery is that the cause of the increasing chain-reaction was the
test detonation of the naquadriah bomb by Kelowna.

While
Carter and Jonas are on Langara the rest of SG-1 stay at the SGC to help with
the moving of the people of Langara to another planet if things continue to get
worse. Quickly it becomes clear however that while the three nations of Langara
(Kelowna, Tirania, and Andari Federation) have made progress to working
together issues between the three start to rise almost immediately, such as
requests for a planet each due to long hatreds. The revelation of the cause of
the imminent catastrophe sets back negotiations further, with O’Neill and Teal’c
wanting to let them deal with it themselves given how they’re deadest on
refusing help.

Back
on Langara Carter and Jonas put together a plan to trigger another earthquake
deliberately to cut the naquadah vein in half and stop the rest from being
converted to naquadriah. This is to be done with a small bomb supplied from the
SGC to be delivered by a manned mining vehicle that the Kewlownans have. In
private Kianna tries to get Jonas to remove the reliance on the SGC, stating
that they have an agenda regarding the naquadriah, but Jonas convinces her to
trust them like he does before it’s revealed that the two have a relationship
that goes beyond work colleagues. Later Kianna goes back to the lab alone and
injects herself with an unknown substance. Carter however becomes suspicious of
Kianna given her advanced knowledge and later confirm that Kianna is indeed a
Goa’uld.

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Despite
Kianna’s true nature Carter realises they have no choice but to trust her to control
the drill as no one but the Goa’uld has any idea of how to control the drill
fast enough. With Teal’c joining the three of them the team begin their descent
into the planet encountering a number of problems along the way including a
large magma deposit. Eventually the drill stops functioning, having been
damaged by the journey downwards, leaving their only option being someone drags
the bomb through the crack themselves, a likely suicide mission that Kianna
volunteers for knowing that as a Goa’uld she’s the only one who can make it
without dying.

At
the SGC Daniel finally has enough of the squabbling delegates, who can’t agree
on simple things such as a selection process for refugees. Instead O’Neill
decides to intervene and plays a ruse that the idea of relocation is off due to
their inability to move forward with the process. This finally gives the three
representatives the message to stop acting like children but by then the
mission has already been completed anyway.

Near
the drillsite Kianna successfully delivers the bomb but barely makes it back
alive. Despite the attempts of the SGC to help her the Goa’uld dies but chooses
to save the host rather than kill her as well. The team say farewell to Jonas
before he and the host leave for Kelowna.

Analysis

And
here the show goes back to normal, with an episode about terrible things
happening to a planet and the SGC are the ones to save the day again.

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Here
the show uses the usual story with the Langarans which is that their
politicians are utterly useless. Even though their society had taken some steps
after the start of the season the leaders are still shown to be squabbling
children who couldn’t agree to a drink order let alone saving the lives of
their citizens. In a rare showing even Daniel eventually gets tired of the
diplomatic effort, agreeing to O’Neill’s ruse to scare them into following the
SGC plan. Instead for the majority of the episode follows the military/science
team trying to solve the problem themselves without the government, with the
civilian scientist also being a Goa’uld.

This
again brings about the slight shift the show sometimes take into almost
glorifying the idea of a military dictatorship as they are shown to be the ones
to get things done while the civilians just dick about blaming each other. This
is understandably a controversial line to take, even more so at the time of the
Iraq War where it was slowly feeding into public anger at both the military and
government as by 2004 the war was already starting to go out of control.

The
Goa’uld in the episode is probably the most stark contrast present. Until know
the Goa’uld have always been very one-dimensional characters despite some of
the newer additions like Ba’al starting to expand that field. Here however the
Goa’uld inhabiting Kianna is shown to be quite complex for the episode, not
only displaying actual feelings for Jonas but a willingness to put herself in
danger for the sake of the mission, with Goa’uld in the past even refusing to
work together for self-preservation. What is however left quiet is how fucked
up Kianna is likely to be in the future given how she was effectively trapped
in her own body for the entire of the relationship between herself and Jonas.

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Overall
the episode is an action-packed one involving the team saving yet another
planet from destruction but does raise some awkward situations that are never
resolved.

Assorted Musings

· Hey we just happen to have a bomb while you have a drill!
Convenient much.

Quote of the episode: “This is diplomacy, Jack. This is the
way the game is played. It takes patience.”